Rights Abuses by Mexico Military in Spotlight

By

Nicholas Casey

February 16, 2012

MEXICO CITY—Throughout Mexico's drug war, the country's military has shrugged off allegations that soldiers have occasionally tortured or even executed suspected members of drug cartels, saying that the majority of the charges were made up by zealous activists or the cartels themselves.

Drug Crime in Mexico

But three high-profile cases this month that are being investigated outside the military's own secret courts have prompted the army's top commander to say the military may have committed serious human-rights abuses.

One case concerns a colonel who prosecutors are investigating for allegedly ordering the killings of military deserters and the burning of their bodies after they allegedly joined a drug cartel in 2010. The two other cases concern military commanders who allegedly ordered the killings of civilians.

The three cases emerged in articles in Reforma, a top Mexican newspaper. The Supreme Court, which is charged with determining if the cases would be tried in civilian court, acknowledged the cases' existence and said it was investigating them.

Civilian prosecutors are also investigating a number of soldiers for their alleged participation in those same killings. While the military says it is still investigating the cases separately, the country's top general emerged in a public speech last week with a rare admission of mistakes.

"Have there been mistakes? Of course there have been," said Guillermo Galván, who has led the military since President Felipe Calderón stepped up the country's crackdown on cartels in 2006.

Mr. Galván called for the army to support "the victims [of abuse] and their families, and to punish offenders and repair damage that has been caused."

In statements to The Wall Street Journal, the military said abuse allegations from Mexican citizens had risen in recent months and said it was committed to investigating all charges and defending human rights.

The events leave Mexico facing a situation not dissimilar from that of Colombia, which in the 1990s also called its army to battle drug traffickers only to see it snared in human-rights scandals. In 2008, it emerged that Colombian soldiers were murdering peasants and claiming they were rebels killed in action—a ploy by the soldiers to inflate their numbers of enemy kills and impress superiors. Colombian prosecutors are now investigating some 1,500 cases of the so-called false-positives and have made several convictions. As in Colombia, the allegations have been used by both sides as political football in Mexico in debating how best to fight crime groups.

In Mexico, military prosecutors say they are investigating more than 3,500 cases of human-rights violations allegedly committed by soldiers, including cases of killings, rape and torture. The U.S. Justice Department added to the tally when it ruled in December that an American accused of drug trafficking had been tortured by the Mexican military in Ciudad Juárez.

The military has historically been protected from civilian courts, with any crimes committed by soldiers being decided in closed military tribunals. Of the thousands of rights abuse allegations against it, the military has convicted only 29 people.

But growing public pressure has forced the military to accept greater scrutiny. Mr. Calderón last year proposed reforms that would automatically give civilian courts jurisdiction over some crimes like rape and torture allegedly committed by the military, but the bill failed to pass Mexico's fractious Congress.

The recently publicized cases have prompted rights groups to urge Mr. Calderón to push again for reform.

"At this point, not even the Mexican military is denying that serious abuses are taking place," said Nik Steinberg, who heads the Mexico unit of the New York-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch. "The general's admission will make it harder for President Calderón to keep putting off taking action to ensure that the soldiers responsible are brought to justice."

Mr. Calderón's office didn't respond to a request to comment.

Still, civilian courts are now beginning to investigate allegations of rights abuses by the armed forces—even if military tribunals have the last word.

Several recent cases being investigated by civilian courts—and that haven't yet gone to trial—have been leaked to Reforma. The military hasn't contested the existence of the cases, and says it is investigating them within its own courts, too.

In one Supreme Court file, Mexican prosecutors accuse a colonel of ordering the execution and burning of two army deserters who were found working with a cartel called La Línea, Reforma reported. In a second Supreme Court file, prosecutors charge a general with ordering the deaths of at least seven civilians, the paper said. In a third, prosecutors charge a lieutenant colonel with shooting and killing two men in a pickup truck—one allegedly after being detained by soldiers—while the soldiers were looking for cartel hit men, Reforma reported. All three events allegedly took place in Chihuahua state.

Mexico's army declined to provide access to the men or their military attorneys, but said the accused were in jail and under investigation. The Supreme Court declined to provide access to the court files of cases that haven't gone to trial.

While allegations of and convictions for human-rights abuses have soared since 2006, some say that the military could be turning a corner in acknowledging that problems have occurred. "For years, the military has been able to deny what is happening and investigate cases on their own, but that is changing," says Emilio Rabasa, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who writes a newspaper column that advocates for judicial reform.

He added that efforts to try cases outside military courts would be crucial for military accountability.

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